[Middy]

It was a throw away spend before i sent my Zen back for repair. But my set up is so untidy my batmobile aerial fits in..
I did think a can of plasticote white could work but its always dodgy trying to paint some plastics. It might work a good clean and mask up the connector. From Dark Knight to white Angel...

 

[Pro-Jules]

I prefer to send the Blue Zen hi res audio from my DAP but Spotify with some eq love, via AAC sounds pretty great too.

 

[Taz777]

I've just ordered a Zen Blue to use in a small HiFi system. My plan is to stream from LG V30 using aptX HD to the Blue, and have the Blue connected to a vintage amp. I hope it works well!

 

[Sebastien Chiu]

I prefer to send the Blue Zen hi res audio from my DAP but Spotify with some eq love, via AAC sounds pretty great too.

Glad you're enjoying it!

I've just ordered a Zen Blue to use in a small HiFi system. My plan is to stream from LG V30 using aptX HD to the Blue, and have the Blue connected to a vintage amp. I hope it works well!

Drop your impressions here when you get everything in and going! Look forward to seeing what you think

 

[dharmasteve]

I've just ordered a Zen Blue to use in a small HiFi system. My plan is to stream from LG V30 using aptX HD to the Blue, and have the Blue connected to a vintage amp. I hope it works well!

Why not LDAC?

 

[Middy]

Try them all

 

[Taz777]

Why not LDAC?

I don’t think my LG V30 phone does LDAC. I’ll have to check and it would be a pleasant surprise if it does.

 

[Taz777]

Glad you're enjoying it!



Drop your impressions here when you get everything in and going! Look forward to seeing what you think

Will do. Just about to order the vintage amp - I have a shortlist of a few from the late 70s and 80s. It’ll be an interesting pairing of vintage and cutting edge.

 

[dharmasteve]

I don’t think my LG V30 phone does LDAC. I’ll have to check and it would be a pleasant surprise if it does.

I've got the LG V30 and in the developer options you can choose LDAC (if Android system is kept up to date). APTX-HD can be useful if there are problems using the LDAC signal, but if you can use it LDAC sounds a little better in the highs. I run the Zen Blue to a Cambridge T-Amp and Wharfedale Diamond speakers and I love it. Enjoy.

 

[Taz777]

Quick question(s) about the Zen Blue: does it come with a twin RCA interconnect cable? If so, what is the approximate length of this cable?

 

[Sebastien Chiu]

Quick question(s) about the Zen Blue: does it come with a twin RCA interconnect cable? If so, what is the approximate length of this cable?

Yes, it does, it's 21 inches!

 

[Taz777]

Given the following audio chain:

LG V30 phone with MQA —> BT 5.0 LDAC —> iFi Zen Blue—> RCA—> Amplifier

What would be the decoding quality on the Blue if I played an MQA song on my V30 in terms of sample rate and bit depth at the point of the D-to-A conversion?

 

[Taz777]

I've just received my Blue! Haven't connected it into anything just yet, but the cyan lights colour shows an LDAC connection with my LG V30+ phone without any issues whatsoever.

One thing I did notice was that the lights are quite bright for a dark bedroom at night. Is there a way to switch off the lights on the Blue, or have them very dim? If not, I could stick car window film tint onto the front to subdue the brightness of the lights.

 

[Pro-Jules]

You can turn it sideways to face something to block the light. To get the best audio make sure you access the blutooth settings buried in "developer options" on your phone to force best quality LDAC. And if you have the option feed your system digital outs from the Zen Blue (Optical or Coax)

 

[Taz777]

You can turn it sideways to face something to block the light. To get the best audio make sure you access the blutooth settings buried in "developer options" on your phone to force best quality LDAC. And if you have the option feed your system digital outs from the Zen Blue (Optical or Coax)

So here's the thing with the bit in bold. I configured the Bluetooth connection on my LG V30 to use the best audio quality straight after pairing. When I went into the Developer Settings, I saw my BT connection was LDAC. This was confirmed in the Zen Blue showing a cyan light. However, the Developer Settings option called Bluetooth Audio LDAC Codec: Playback Quality is showing Best Effort (Adaptive Bit Rate). It loses the setting of Optimized for Audio Quality. Nevertheless, the Bluetooth configuration setting of best audio quality seems to set the connection to LDAC anyway, so all is good!

In other words, I only had to configure the Bluetooth connection once in the V30 after pairing with the Zen Blue to best audio quality and it always connects using LDAC. Straight after pairing (it shows the Blue as a headphone) my V30 showed a popup asking me to set the audio quality.

I've now tested the sound quality in one of my HiFi systems that uses a NAD D 3020 V2 integrated amplifier connected via coax to the Blue and the sound quality is very good indeed! That's using a digital coax connection from the Blue to the NAD amp via coax, so it'll be using the DAC in the amp which is a fairly average DAC.